Aero Rubber has been a trusted supplier of reusable Pallet Bands to industry since 1974. While the company has many appreciative customers, including some it has been serving for decades, it believes a lot more pallet users could benefit from this product. In many respects, it feels like the “Big Band” Era hasn’t really yet begun in terms of the opportunity for more widespread enjoyment of securing a unit load in a cost effective manner.

This point of view led to an email that recently arrived at my Packaging Revolution email inbox, and then a subsequent conference call with the company, involving several key company personnel, including John Kasman, company CEO and owner. “I think it’s a great product that too many people just don’t know about,” he explained.

How the Band Works

The concept of a rubberband is straight forward to grasp, both figuratively and literally. It bands the load to provide stability. It can be applied as a single rubberband, or depending upon the load, multiple bands may be required. The Pallet Band can also be used in conjunction with corner boards, or even just as a packaging tool to hold up corner boards while wrapping. With many decades of Pallet Band experience participating in the conference call, I was quickly brought to understand the approach can be quite versatile, depending upon the characteristics of the load involved. “The potential for this product is only limited by your imagination,” stated Paul Berlin, the company’s Vice President of Operations. The company’s highly experienced sales engineering staff can help advise how rubberbands can reduce or eliminate pallet wrap expenditure.

Benefits of Pallet Bands

While it often takes 60 seconds to shrink wrap a pallet, the company says, one of its bands can be applied in just seconds by a single employee. It goes on faster, and does not require awkward postures or walking backwards around pallets of merchandise, both risky actions in terms of worker safety. Because the band does not impede airflow, it does not interfere with product ventilation, cooling or drainage. Another plus – it can be used to eliminate the use of tape to secure loads, which can damage consumer packaging when being removed.

The Pallet Band can come in various sizes and thicknesses, as well as specific formulations to address more demanding environments in terms of cold temperature or ultraviolet rays. For example, Pallet Bands for freezer environments are formulated to remain flexible even at very low temperature. UV protection is important to ensure longevity in exterior applications.

In terms of sustainability, John Kuhn, who leads the RubberBand division of the business, stresses that Aero’s Pallet Band is manufactured from natural rubber, a recyclable resource. At the end of usable life, the Pallet Band decomposes naturally in landfills. In sufficient volume, it can be recycled into such rubber products as matting, however, typically a Pallet Band user would not generate enough rubberbands to make recycling feasible.

Payback in Just a Few Months

For a leading North American food service distributor, the Pallet Band delivered a payback period of 3 months – or 12 uses, while continuing to deliver savings during a lifecycle averaging well over 2 years. As such, the Pallet Band delivered significant avoidance of shrink wrap purchase as well as bypassing the hassles of scrap plastic and cutting knives. In another application, a smaller version of rubberband, the Tuff Job RubberBand, provided huge productivity gains as a quick solution for adding components to a kit as it moves down a manufacturing assembly line.

Is the Pallet Band an opportunity for your company to eliminate the cost of shrink wrap? To explore the opportunities, visit AeroRubber at www.aerorubber.com, or contact a Senior Sales Engineer at 1-800-662-1009.